20 Paper&Rubber Magazine / April, 2013
a scoring round I am dropping more points than usual, I may look at possible ways to prevent this from happening. I know from experience that sometimes in the middle of shooting I can lose focus and let my mind wander from shooting, so I would look at strategies to help maintain my focus throughout the full number of scored arrows.
When it gets to one week out from the competition, this is when I like to start winding down my shooting, should roughly 80-100 arrows a day, and generally none the day before I leave. During this time I am focusing on keeping my bow fitness up so that I can arrive at the competition as bow fit as I possibly could be and ready to shoot.
A couple of things to note; for me, I have never enjoyed shooting blank butt. I loathe the thought of shooting at an empty target from 5m away, and as such I never do it.
The reason that I don’t like blank butt is that I find the feeling of the bow when shooting blank butt is never the same as what I feel when I shoot 50m. So if I am having form issues, for example if I was experiencing some target panic, then I would stick with 50m but change the size of the target, or use a different scope housing.
For me, this works best because I am still concentrating on aiming and shooting shots, which I would not be as focused on if I was shooting blank butt. I do know there is a place for blank butt with some people; especially those people starting out shooting or who are making large changes/recovering from bad target panic, it’s just not for me personally.
Another thing is that all year round I am working on my mental game. It never stops. I am always envisioning me shooting arrows at the target and the arrows landing right in the middle. We all know what the feeling of a great-shot arrow, so I try to feel that during the day, whether I’m working or studying, I will take a moment to focus on that feeling and see my arrows landing in the 10.
What I have found this does it that it gets my body accustomed to that feeling and increases the chances of me feeling that way when I am actually shooting arrows.
Hopefully this has giving you an insight into some of the prep work I do before shooting a major competition.
Steve Clifton